Quotes About Observation

What I've learned about being a parent is how much you sort of secretly learn from everyone else and how valuable it is.

For me, it was valuable just to be able to watch how Jeff operated every day, as well as his leaders and his direct reports.

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

The value of art is in the observer.

In my years, I had the opportunity to observe peoples and countries. I see some countries doing well, others failing, and my analysis of things is that whether you fail or succeed is a function of your value system.

with peach syrup, was still studying him carefully. Virginia

His gaze lingered upon Abigail

He remembers noticing his dad's shadow was shorter than the others, and he had a visceral sense his father was weaker than the rest, and that he was more dangerous as a weak person with a lot of power than a powerful person with a lot of power.

But in this life we take turns at being enchanting, then enchanted. First we play in the streets, unaware of the freedom burning in the sun on our hair and the cigarette in our mouth, unconscious of the daydreams we inspire. Then it's our time to sit at a window and watch, and we are moved.

Outside my window, truckers trucked, hookers fucked, cops cruised, kids smoked, elders yelled, invalids slept, spouses fought, lovers kissed, while I watched a pussycat playing with stars in a black room.

Problems of Captive Breeding. We humans don't like to have sex under the watchful eyes of others; some potentially valuable animal species don't like to, either. That's what derailed attempts to domesticate cheetahs, the swiftest of all land animals, despite our strong motivation to do so for thousands of years.

Sex in social mammals is generally carried out in public, before the gazes of other members of the troop.

An example of a much more difficult invention is writing, which does not suggest itself by observation of any natural material. As we saw in Chapter 12, it had only a few independent origins, and the alphabet arose apparently only once in world history.

One way of thinking about science is that it's a check against the natural human tendency to see patterns that might not be there. It's a way of knowing when a pattern is real and when it's a trick of your mind.

Codebreakers train themselves to see more deeply.

The genre is called travel writing for a reason: it involves a traveler. Mostly, the traveler in good travel writing is not a local and doesn't pretend to be.

Truly competent Literary Detectives are as rare as truthful men, Mr. Tweed -- you can see her potential as clearly as I can. Frightened of someone stealing your thunder, perhaps?

The people to listen to are the ones who don't say very much

Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.

In fact, the room was so quiet you might have heard a drop of paint splash.

That's insane.' 'If you look around, you won't find much that isn't.

Children are such consummate liars

Those that see to much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.

Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.